Review: 2013 Honda Civic EX

GLOBE-SPRAWLING auto companies are not, as a group, particularly nimble. Very capital-intensive, you know, many stakeholders. Hey, slow down, mister. Things happen for a reason around here.

So response time is always an issue. In order for street-level consumer sentiment to reach board level, it has to pass through dozens of layers of filtration and creative butt covering. There are really two whole message ecologies to navigate, one outside the walls, on the consumer side—i.e., what is it exactly consumers want?—and one inside the company, the winding staircase to the boss’s office.

Only then can the rail cars of redesigned windshields be ordered, the truckloads of LCD displays, the boatloads of tires. Thousands of jobs are in play. Did we get this one right?

In the recent history of the Honda Civic, the answer would be no. A redesign of the company’s perennial Jederwagen debuted in spring 2011 to resounding scorn. The problem was unsubtle: American Honda product planners had cheaped out—extracted value, if you like—lowering unit costs in areas like sound abatement, interior materials and general thoughtfulness of design. Honda execs now admit the car was uncompetitive, which is the coldest comfort to the thousands who bought it anyway.

The moment of public shaming came when Consumer Reports announced last year that for the first time in a generation, it could not recommend the new Civic. If it had been a samurai movie, it would have been raining.

Twenty months later, we are looking at a very different automobile, not so much redesigned as given a deep-skin laser ablation. Typically, revisions this significant would be reserved for a midmodel refresh, which most companies execute every three years or so; Honda has pulled that refresh forward by a year and a half.

The Civic’s cabin has been mightily upgraded, with better seats and upholstery; richer, faux-stitched material on the upper dash and doors, in a dark charcoal color; a more elegant center-stack controller with brushed alloy-like fascia and brightwork bezels. The upper instrument panel in the Civic’s split-level dash features a 5-inch LCD display with standard backup camera view. Bluetooth, Pandora and other infotainment features are rolled in as standard equipment.

Artful polished-chrome accents around the upper and lower grille and at the taillights have lifted the dreariness from the Civic’s exterior. The car now seems to abide with forward-situated purpose, the brightwork sharpening and quickening the form.

Generally speaking, car makers would rather not change any of a model’s exterior after only 20 months in production. Changes in the big tooling cost real money. Honda execs have estimated that the changes to 2013 Civic add up to about $500 per unit. Given that the 2013 model-year effective price increase is only $160, the arithmetic suggests American Honda has elected to take smaller margins on the new Civic in order to remain competitive.

Historical note: Chrysler attempted the same thing in the 1950s, accelerating Virgil Exner’s Forward Look designs, scheduled for 1958, to the 1957 model year. But the changes were so hasty and production so haphazard that the company sent some cars to dealerships partially assembled, with instructions on how to attach parts workers might find in the trunk, in the glove box or even in the mail.

Mechanically, the most notable upgrade is the Civic’s reinforced front-chassis section, designed to cope with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s new 40-miles-per-hour narrow-offset front crash test (which is quite a wallop, by the way). Honda’s internal studies suggest the new Civic will ace the institute’s narrow-offset test.

The revamped car’s added chassis rigidity gave the ride-and-handling department more room to firm up the Civic’s suspension without compromising ride compliance. Upgraded springs, struts and antiroll bars, as well as bigger brakes and lighter alloy wheels, round out the road-holding package.

Out on a nice country two-lane, the new Civic definitely feels more centered, more settled in its sneakers than the previous car, with less body lean in corners and more composed transitional behavior over uneven pavement. The electrically assisted power-steering ratio is a tick quicker, and the self-centering feel is more affirmative.

The Civic’s powertrain remains unchanged: a 1.8-liter port-injected four cylinder with 140 horsepower and 128 pound-feet of torque, buttoned to a five-speed automatic and front-wheel drive. The redesigned car weighs 50 to 100 pounds more than the previous addition, depending on trim level, so the performance penalty is negligible. Figure on a 0-60 mph acceleration of about 9 seconds. EPA fuel economy comes in at 28/39 miles per gallon, city/highway.

In terms of the ownership experience, the single best change to the Civic has to be the improved aural quality of the cabin and the refinement of the powertrain notes. The previous car was surprisingly shouty, especially at full throttle, and a distracting amount of wind and tire noise droned inside the car at highway speeds.

The hurry-up redesign adds an acoustically laminated windshield and side-front windows, as well as hunks of sound-dampening material around the front wheel wells, floor and firewall. All this has eliminated a lot of acoustic hot spots around the windshield. The noise abatement throws a muffling blanket over the exertions of the hardworking little four-banger, making it feel less stressed and more refined.

It’s not that the Civic has been transformed so much as awakened. And in point of fact, the pulled-forward redesign merely restores the Civic to its accustomed place near the head of the compact-sedan pack. The 2012 model-year Civic is destined for the memory hole. The more instructive part of the story is Honda’s willingness to respond so quickly, to take a hit in unit cost to protect the brand’s good name.

In this season of resolutions, it’s nice to see the capacity to change.